image: Dr. Ana Daugherty, associate professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been named director of Wayne State University's Institute of Gerontology.
Credit: Wayne State University
DETROIT — Dr. Ezemenari M. Obasi, vice president for research & innovation at Wayne State University, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Ana Daugherty as director of the Institute of Gerontology in the Division of Research & Innovation.
Daugherty is a cognitive neuroscientist with a specialty in aging, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, and an associate professor jointly appointed in Wayne State’s Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Gerontology. She replaces Dr. Peter Lichtenberg, who ended a 25-year tenure as director of the institute.
Daugherty has a long affiliation with the Institute of Gerontology. She earned her doctorate in psychology and cognitive neuroscience from Wayne State University, and was a pre-doctoral trainee funded by an NIA T32 training grant at the Institute of Gerontology. After completing a competitive postdoctoral fellowship at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she joined the Institute of Gerontology faculty in 2018 with an affiliation to the Translational Neuroscience Program.
She holds several research leadership positions, including site principal investigator of the NIH P30 Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and is a member of the steering committee for the Hippocampal Subfields group, an international working group dedicated to MRI biomarker harmonization and validation. Daugherty also directs the Detroit Aging Brain Study, a community-partnered longitudinal study that has been in place for more than 23 years in the metro Detroit area to study changes in brain structure and function across the adult lifespan.
The National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center and the American Federation for Aging Research have awarded Daugherty recognition for excellence in research, and she has earned distinctions for outstanding teaching from Wayne State’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and for postdoctoral mentorship from Wayne State’s Graduate School.
The Institute of Gerontology is a premier program intensively focused on research, advanced pre- and post-doctoral training, community outreach, and continuing education for health care providers. The institute dedicates research in the social and behavioral sciences and cognitive neurosciences on issues of aging and urban health.
As director, Daugherty will facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, lead training for emerging scholars, and steward an institutional research portfolio in risk and resiliency in aging and dementia. She will continue her research to characterize individual differences in brain and cognitive aging across the adult lifespan with the goal to reduce disparities in late-life cognitive health. In addition, she will help grow the Institute of Gerontology’s mission to empower older adults and those who work with them through discovery and learning.
“I am pleased to have Dr. Daugherty join our division in this very important role as director of the Institute of Gerontology,” said Obasi. “She will play a key part in helping us to continue to grow the important research and outreach of the institute, as well as continue to enhance the national and global reputation of the institute as a cross-disciplinary powerhouse committed to advancing age-related knowledge, support and best practices. I am grateful for the many years of Dr. Lichtenberg's leadership and great accomplishments, and Dr. Tom Jankowski's interim leadership as we searched for a new director for the institute."
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Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit research.wayne.edu.